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AlmostAGhost

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Posts posted by AlmostAGhost

  2. Posted

    I finally got the time to finish the episode. As said earlier, I found this movie tough. I like it and enjoyed it, but have this feeling that most of what I respond to is present in the play -- and not particularly as a piece of cinema. I like having Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the list though, and I think for that I'll stick with my 'yes' vote (also I like having Nichols on there, and I don't like The Graduate).

    Also I took this film fairly straightforwardly. Paul brought up a lot of ideas weaved throughout this story, but I found I just watched it simply -- it's two couples and some secrets on a drunken night. George and Martha as the parents of America? I dunno. I love reading into art but for this one, I kept it clear and didn't really consider it a 'comment' on anything at all. *shrug* Maybe I missed the point, but I felt pretty good about it this way.

  3. Posted

    Yea... I voted yes, but I'm not so sure and mostly agree with @sycasey 2.0. I actually do like it a lot, and a ton more than The Graduate, but I'm still not sure about it being on the 'greatest of all time' list. That makes it one of the tougher votes for me.

    Haven't finished the ep, though, maybe Paul and Amy will convince me one way or another.

  5. Posted

    It appears from Paul's twitter that Pulp Fiction will be sliding in there next week before Bringing Up Baby

    7/18 - Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    7/25 - Pulp Fiction
    8/1 - Bringing Up Baby

     

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    2 hours ago, gigi-tastic said:

    Welcome back! I hope you had a great time and if you're too tired it's ok to skip.

    I'm delightfully confounded by the Goofy porter statue from your trip.

    Well if last night was any indication, I'll be up really early tomorrow again with nothing to do but watch films in the dark. :) How quick I get to it though depends on how quick I get through Gone With The Wind.

    Yea, that Goofy made me smile... it was in this really great bookstore that my brother and I were poking around in. They had a ton of Disney items/comics/drawings for some reason.

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    I'm back from my trip! If anyone wants to see pix of my Norway trip, follow or check out my instagram here - i nightly posted a small set of shots from that day's travels/hikes in the Norwegian wilderness/etc. https://www.instagram.com/almostaghost/

    Anyway, this movie looks like a good one to get back in on, I'm excited for this cast. I'll try to fit it in on my jetlag in the next couple of days!

    • Like 6

  9. Posted

    1 hour ago, grudlian. said:

    I can't say Mookie did the right thing by destroying a pizzeria in response to police violence against people of color but I also can't say he did the wrong thing.

    I'll say it, then. I think it was the right thing. Or more accurately, I don't think it was misdirected, nor pointless.

    I get the argument that it wasn't proportional, and that's probably true, but Sal was the power there for them to fight - a white business owner who yells at the kids, uses slurs, has a badly racist son, and thinks he is in charge just because he's been feeding everyone the longest. I mean, I guess they could've gone over to Trump Tower and burned that down instead. But the store's crime wasn't murder, it was arrogant whiteness (further symbolized by it's Wall Of Fame). That's what "Fight The Power" is about, and that's what Do The Right Thing is about. It's not about fighting authority, it's about fighting abuse of or misappropriated power. That's the self-defense that, for me, meets Malcolm X's quote.

    I love the discussions inherent in this movie--it's truly thought-provoking from every angle.

    • Like 3

  14. Posted

    33 minutes ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

    will say, of the movies that would trigger a lengthy debate on the merits of the AFI list, I was not expecting it to be, "#99. You Story."

    I guess, but I also think we all generally like Toy Story ok, and whether we think it should be on the list or not, we all know it's popular, we know it's a fine enough story, we know it has cool voice actors, and there isn't much else to nitpick on it... so might as well focus on the AFI criteria and other Pixar films. haha

    Has anyone seen Toy Story 4 yet? I prob will go see it this week, maybe tomorrow. What are your non-spoilery impressions?

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Cameron H. said:

    I’m excited because it’s been awhile since I haven’t seen the movie being covered, and now there are TWO coming up! I bought Virginia Woolf and Bringing Up Baby when they were on the cheap, but I’ve held off on watching them until they were going to be covered on the show.

    Yea I'm stoked for Woolf for that reason. Not only have I not seen it, I haven't one clue what it's about or who is in it or even when it was made. I usually have a good sense of these things, even if I haven't seen them... but for this one, I feel like a total blank slate. I'm gonna try to leave it that way until I watch it

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    oh boy I can't wait to hear the ep and what you guys think about Bringing Up Baby. I watched it last summer not realizing it was on the AFI list, and I'm still a bit surprised by that -- not in a bad way, I do like it a lot. In my Letterboxd review, I called it "the most nutballs movie of all time" or something like that. Curious what I'll think re-watching it through an Unspooled lens.

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    1 hour ago, bleary said:

    Because there is no set of 100 universally adored and lauded movies! 

    Hm I'm not sure I agree with this. Oh sure, there'll be haters of everything, but I think "the best films of all-time" should be fairly set in stone, give or take. I guess I'm in between subjectiveness and objectiveness here; I think we can answer this question, but it maybe isn't definable. That's a wishy-washy statement, I know. Maybe I'm wrong and it's unanswerable.

    Still, the question isn't "how many awards did The Godfather win?" it's "why is this so good?" That's where the focus should be. Wouldn't the list be better if "consider how many major awards it won" was replaced with "has an innovative structure and a story filled with remarkable characters" or "builds a cinematic universe" or whatnot?

    My takeaway from Unspooled is that perhaps the 'general consensus' that led to the AFI results needs some shaking up and modernization, and I think the criteria is a big part why.

    • Like 2

  21. Posted

    42 minutes ago, bleary said:

    AlmostAGhost questioned whether a self-proclaimed list of greatest movies should be using these criteria, as their relevance towards a movie's greatness is perhaps questionable.  But three of the five criteria are about a movie's greatness!  Critical recognition asks, did critics (at the time and over the following years) think the movie is great?  Major award competition asks, did industry professionals (at the time) think the movie is great?  Popularity over time asks, do fans (over the following years) still think the movie is great? 

    Right, but let's look at the criteria this way.

    Out of the 52 films, I've only rated like 10 of these 5 stars. And I feel like a lot of us are doing similar. The criteria of the AFI isn't particularly working. Sure, we're a vastly smaller sample than the AFI voters, but that criteria gives an unnecessary bias to the list. My guess is that the 100 movies on the list, most of them are all really good... but how many truly are truly GREAT? Every week we're seeing that it's not nearly as many as we think. So all that criteria is being rendered silly.

    And honestly I'd bet most of the actual voters haven't seen, say, Intolerance anyway, they're just echoing whoever. That's another problem with critics and awards, they create an echo chamber.

    The methodology is there for the creation of the AFI list, fine, but I don't see why I or we should follow it or even consider it. When I think about whether a movie is great, I definitely don't go "well how many Oscars did it win?" or "what do critics think of it?" That's a weird way to think about art if you ask me.

    • Like 2

  22. Posted

    4 minutes ago, grudlian. said:

    This is great but it makes me wonder about the nature of the game.

    Did the kid always mean for Matthew McConaughey to kill his step dad in the game? Because it seems like the game started as just hanging with his dad and fishing. If the rules changed to kill his step dad, having an anagram name for Bad Killer makes no sense. That would mean the anagram is just for the audience and it's a complete coincidence on the part of the kid.

    Hmmm yea. I was thinking maybe it was like the kid's avatar name. The kid is being Baker Dill in the game in order to kill his stepdad. Was he controlling Baker Dill? He was, in a way, I guess. Was Baker Dill even real? I don't know.

  25. Posted

    3 minutes ago, bleary said:

    First off, I want to rule out Toy Story 3, and it largely leans on the criteria that AFI asked jurors to consider in their voting: critical recognition, major award competition, popularity over time, historical significance, and cultural impact.

    Yea that's true. I'll add, my ratings and answering the 'should this be on the list' more or less ignores the AFI's criteria. Perhaps the first film does meet the criteria better than the second two, or any other Pixar film, or just about any movie ever, come to think of it, but... I'm not sure much of those criteria are relevant to the question ("What is great?").

    • Like 2
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